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The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has repeatedly (108th-113th Congresses) designated "Managing Federal Real Property" one of the high-risk areas within the Federal government most prone to waste, fraud and abuse. One of the reasons cited by GAO is the fact that the government does not have a current, accurate inventory of the land it owns. The General Services Administration (GSA) collects data from at least 30 Federal agencies, but its system has been criticized by GAO for being "unreliable and of limited usefulness” and "not current or reliable.” On the other hand, the government inefficiently maintains a plethora of land inventories that are inaccurate, out-of-date, single purpose, and non-interoperable.This inefficiency should not be the case when a single, uniform, reliable, regularly-maintained database is currently available through state-of-the- art geographic information systems (GIS) technology.

How much land does the government own? It seems like a basic question that would have a simple answer, but the federal government does not have the kind of basic property and asset data that a well-run business or responsible family relies on to manage its finances.

Very basic steps like using geographic information system (GIS) imaging to map all federal property or requiring all agencies to use uniform methods when reporting the status of their real property have not been pursued. These kinds of initiatives would greatly aid establishing a real property inventory to cut government waste, keep track of stimulus and bailout spending, and examine financial sector systemic risk oversight.

With millions of acres and thousands of assets in government portfolios, officials should take steps to identify what they own, determine whether government or private ownership is most effective, and streamline the efficient transfer of all unneeded real property.